


Nightmare

by Ellohcee



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Marichat, Nightmare, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:16:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13368453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellohcee/pseuds/Ellohcee
Summary: In the dark of the night he finds his way to her, lost and shaken and needing to escape that tomb of a mansion that holds all of Mother's memories.





	Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Writing prompt #40 - "Whisper"
> 
> This work can also be found on my tumblr [Here](https://ellohcee.tumblr.com/post/167366959283/how-are-you-not-getting-frequent-writing-requests)

She’s on the verge of sleep, in that halfway state where she’s still conscious but just barely so. It’s probably close to midnight and Marinette had just finished laying out a pattern for a dress after spending hours measuring and cutting and pinning. She’d worked until her eyes were too heavy to continue, and she didn’t dare start sewing anything tonight lest she misplace a stitch in her exhaustion.

It is this dazed and near sleeping state that she’s startled out of when a tap sounds above her head. Heart racing as her exhausted body tries to come back to the living, she looks up through the dark and sees a pair of green eyes glowing faintly beyond the window. Some part of her sleep deprived brain wants to be grumpy, but he never knocks on her window if the lights are out so her first instinct is to be worried. Marinette pushes herself upright and reaches up to unlatch the skylight, pushing it up a bit so he can lift it open the rest of the way.

Marinette backs up to make room, waving him down. Chat slinks in through the window and carefully closes it behind him, and in the dark of her room it’s suddenly very quiet, and she just hears his off-sounding breathing.

“Chat, is everything okay?” she whispers, reaching out towards his outline and finding his gloved hand with her own.

He shuffles uncertainly on the bed, his fingers shaking slightly in her hold and making her worry increase. “I’m so sorry to bother you this late- I just- sometimes I get these- these nightmares-” he responds in a hushed, slightly raspy voice. “And I felt so trapped there and I had to go somewhere that wasn’t there-”

Marinette’s heart clenches tightly as his trembling voice rambles in a manner that is so unusual for him, and she crawls closer on the bed to wrap her arms around him in a hug. He falls silent in her embrace, still shaking a little from the remnants of his nightmares, and returns the hug in an almost desperate manner. “I’m sorry-” he whispers again, and she can hear his voice breaking.

“Don’t apologize, Chaton,” she cuts him off gently, moving her hand in circles on his back. “You don’t ever have to be sorry, I promise. Especially if something’s wrong, you’re welcome here anytime, okay?” she asks softly, feeling his arms tighten around her.

“Thank you,” he squeaks, as if he’s trying to keep emotions in check.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Marinette ventures carefully, listening to the sound of his shallow breathing in the ensuing silence.

“It was… my mother,” he says, voice barely audible even in the dead silence of her room.

Marinette feels her heart beating fiercely in anxious anticipation, because Chat makes comments and vague statements about his father, but she’s never heard any mention of his mother. She’s had a suspicion that the woman is no longer around, but has never had the nerve to ask. Marinette knows no matter how close friends are, there are certain topics not to breach unless invited. Now seeing him here so shaken, so unlike himself, with the first ever mention of his mother, she’s scared of what he may reveal. Scared to know her partner may have been without the love of a mother for quite some time. She already knows one person like that and it already broke her heart.

Marinette hopes that it will be some unfounded fear, but she knows deep down that it will probably be a sad truth.

She swallows thickly, gathering her courage because if he needs to talk about this, then she will do her best to be here for him. “What happened?” she whispers, her heart surely beating loud enough for him to hear.

“I… don’t know,” he responds slowly. “She’s been… gone for some time. But I don’t know what happened to her. So my mind… sometimes it fills in the blanks?” he chokes, making Marinette’s eyes immediately well up with burning tears, it hits her so hard. Sometimes people talk about closure, and it tears through her heart like claws to imagine if her own mother was gone and she had no idea why.

“Oh, Chat,” she whispers, voice rasping as she tries not to break down. “I’m so… so sorry,” she says, holding him tighter when she feels the tremble in his shoulders become a shudder. “I never knew.”

“It’s…” his voice catches painfully on the word ‘okay,’ because it’s most definitely not okay and he thinks about her every day. But that’s what people say right? ‘It’s okay,’ even though nothing about it is even vaguely such. He doesn’t say it, because it would dismiss the gravity of his mother and dismiss how hard it is for him to talk about her even in passing. And he almost doesn’t want to talk about it with Marinette because she feels so strongly, she’s empathetic to a fault at times and he doesn’t want to put that sadness in her heart.

But oh it hurts, and Father shuts off whenever he tries to talk about her so he has no outlet for this sadness besides breaking something, and he desperately does not want to resort to that. Marinette is like a safety line, she always listens to him with such acceptance and support, that he could trust no one else to see him break down if it comes to it. It’s knowing that she’ll catch him with such wholehearted love and comfort that allows him to venture into this emotional pit.

“Thank you,” he finally rasps, trying to clear his throat. “I just… sometimes it’s too much and my home… reminds me of her. I see memories of us in those halls and I can’t… I can’t do it,” Chat bites out against the tremor in his voice, feeling his eyes start to burn behind the mask with such intensity that he buries his face in Marinette’s shoulder. “Especially after…”

Marinette lets out a choked breath, trying to keep herself together. “What was your nightmare?” she asks thickly.

“I don’t even remember all that well. Just… she was there, and I remember her looking at me and her eyes were so frightened. When I woke up my heart was racing. I’m glad… that I don’t remember, because I just have the feeling it was something terrible,” he whispers.

And there it is, when she thought she couldn’t break any farther. Her entire chest feels like its on fire because her Chaton does not deserve this pain. She knows she would give anything to bring his mother back and lift this burden from him, but there’s nothing she can do but be there for him and offer all the support and love she has in her heart.

He’s silent after that, and she knows that brief talk was all that he can handle on the subject, so she makes an offer before he can start to think he’s worn out his welcome. “Chat, do you… do you want to stay?” she asks, rubbing his back again. “If you can’t go home tonight, you’re welcome here,” she says, because she can’t handle the idea of him going back home to be alone with his thoughts. He never sounds happy talking about his home life in the first place, but with this heavy burden on his heart stinging so painfully right now, she can’t let him go back there.

“That would be nice,” Chat answers hesitantly, as if afraid to trouble her. But Marinette pats his back in assurance, before guiding him to lay down. She pulls the blanket over them both and he clings to her in such a meek and sad manner. Marinette spends the next 20 minutes just whispering to him, about anything and everything, school, food, movies, running fingers through his hair and feeling the tension slowly leave his muscles.

Chat can’t help but melt into her embrace, the anxiety and despair gripping his chest eventually dulling down to a far off ache. It’s still there, deeply embedded in him, but Marinette’s sweet voice whispering to him in the dark, so warm and soothing, helps lessen the pain enough for his body to relax. She’s always been strangely comfortable with him and he’s never been more thankful for that than this moment.

Her whispers slowly put him to sleep, his mind drifting into a haze filled with the sound of Marinette and he does not have anymore nightmares that night.


End file.
